mid-size house

Okay, okay, so you’ve had that fine herbal tea I served up a few months back now, and it’s starting to take effect. Good, good. Things are going according to plan.

But now you’re left wondering ‘how do I tell the bad from the good? How do I avoid a contract disaster or a line getting cut or a publishing house going under?’

When looking at alternative presses, also known as independent publishing houses or small/mid-sized presses, you want to look for this lovely thing called REACH.

Range of distribution

Editorial know-how

Agenda

Current titles

History in publishing

Let’s take it from the top, shall we?

R is for Range of Distribution

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it twice, and I will Keep Saying It Until You Learn Your Goddamn Lesson: it’s all about the distributor. Key words to look for when you’re scouring their website for this information: “in partnership with A Big Five Publishing House”, “handled in conjunction with Major Book Distributor Of Awesome”.Your Big Five Publishing houses are:

Hachette (it’s not pronounced hatchet – it’s French)

Simon and Schuster

HarperCollins

Macmillan

Penguin Random House

Your Major Book Distributors are:

Ingram

Baker & Taylor

Perseus

AnchorTo summarize: the range of distribution must hail far and wide. If your goal is just to get your book online, don’t waste time with a publisher; just do it yourself. Your publisher’s job is to make you more money than you could on your own–remember this above all else!

E is for Editorial Know-how

This is where you’ve got to do some digging. (If you’re into pop music, look up “Doin’ Dirt” by Maroon 5 and get crackin with their Recent Releases page). If they don’t tell you who their editors are and where they come from, find a few titles you don’t mind reading and see how they hold up. If you’re finding errors, walk. Simple as that.

A is for Agenda in Niche and Marketing

Agenda also stands for Niche and Marketing. Some indies have a Niche, like Angry Robot’s horde of SF/FA/All Things Weird. If they don’t have a niche, see about Imprints. Often times a decent-sized indie will do things under additional imprints to make it easier to sell books. This also helps to market the book. Your publisher should always have a marketing agenda, and they should be doing it Fucking Well.

And what it is in the marketing agenda?

One year in advance is awesome, six months is the bare minimum. Anything less is Shit.

Social media presence

Blogging tour

Physical book tour

Advertising

Metadata

Metadata is a big scary word that stands for the data on how data is organized (what?). It’s how keywords and comp titles are born (if you liked This and This, you will like THIS NEW AUTHOR!). The publishing house should have someone on staff who works to analyze the hard data and turn into workable metadata: SEO keywords, phrases for search engines, comparable titles to boost sales.

C is for Current Titles

Who’s on the client list? This is the info that can make or break whether you decide to Give Them The Book or not. Are they big names? Small names? Where are their books? Do they have blogs/what are they like? How did they submit? Do they have agents? Do you need an agent? Many indie publishers do require an agent today, but not all. Add ‘agent’ to your checklist, and if you can’t tick it off…don’t freak out, but do make sure you can check off every other item on the list. (Kensington doesn’t require an agent, and their books are Fucking Everywhere under A Shit Ton of Imprints.)Taking authors without an agent does not a bad press make.

H is for History in the Business

You would be amazed to know the number of folks who have left Big Five publishing. Authors and editorial staff alike have said sayonara due to the shake-ups of the past few years, and it’s these wonderfully talented and knowledgeable folks who make indie houses rock. Check out the history behind the staff of any indie house. If they don’t have it on their site, just ask. Publishers like it when authors have questions; it shows you’re paying attention. Smart authors are everyone’s favorite kind of author to work with (including mine).

Okay, but what else is there?

Well friend, we also have the red flags of doom. AKA, Signs You Should Run Away, Screaming. (Do scream, and scream loudly for all to hear – it keeps others from making the same mistake you just narrowly avoided).

The author will be responsible for purchasing their own ISBN. FUCKING. NEVER. IN A MILLION YEARS. SHOULD ANY PUBLISHER WORTH THEIR SALT ASK THIS OF YOU.

The author will payfor NOTHING BECAUSE THAT’S HOW THIS WORKS.

Whispers of whole lines being dropped.

Books getting endlessly delayed (this is publisher talk for We Want to Drop This Author but We Don’t Want to Pay Them Any Money)

Publisher has only one author on their client list (and it’s the head of the publishing house. Fancy that.)

Publisher claims to be shutting their doors, only to redact this statement and remain open, after massive layoffs. .

But hey –not all indie houses are scary, slimy, shark people. (Don’t ask me why shark people are slimy, just roll with it). Here are a few names that I, Suzanne Lahna, blogger, editor, reader and writer of Many Weird Things, can personally vouch for:

Angry Robot

Diversion Books

Kensington (just LOOK AT THE SIZE OF IT. *grabs a harpoon*)

Sourcebooks

Quirk

And that is not to say there are not many more lovely independent publishers out there in the world (there are!) but I can’t verify them all–that is for you to decide, dear reader. Find the one that’s best for your genre, your style, your story, and not someone else’s. Find the one that fits your needs, and you could find a match made in heaven to move your book from the pile on your desk to published novel.

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Before we begin the learning portion of today’s exercise, I would like to open with the following statements:

If you think e-readers are the downfall of civilization and the writing industry as we know it, turn back now.

If you think self-publishing is only for People Who Can’t Write, there’s the fucking door.

If you think getting published is a lot harder today, sit down, grab a cup of tea – we have a lot to discuss.

For those of us new to the world of publishing, the grand scheme works something like this. You, the author, write things. You go out and find a literary agent, whose job is to help you make money from these things, because they don’t make money until you do. They try to find your book a home at a publisher. The publisher’s job is to make money, regardless of whether you do or not. The publisher then has to get a distributor to actually create your book and spread it amongst book stores, shopping centers, etc.

As a diagram, it would look something like this:

Author -> Agent -> Publisher -> Distributor -> THE WORLD (hopefully).

As with much of the world’s industry, the Powers That Be of Publishing are down to the Big Five. These guys have gobbled up most of the underdogs, including a major merger four years back of Penguin and Random House. Many of the presses you’ll see on books are imprints owned by one of these conglomerates. For example, Delacorte is a big name in young adult titles, and is part of Penguin Random House.

Due to this shift in the publishing industry and the rise of e-readers, I hear authors complaining constantly at conventions and meet-ups that it is next to impossible to become published today.

It is not impossible. It is harder to be published by a Big Five publisher, but Big Five is not the end all be all of traditional publishing.

What?! But in school, I was taught that there was only Big Publishing, evil Vanity Publishing run by Satan, and You’re Better Off Not Bothering Self Publishing.

I know – I was taught the very same thing. But I graduated in 2012. The world of publishing is a very different place today. Thanks in part to the challenges surrounding the Big Five of NYC, middle-sized, small-press, and independent publishing houses have risen up to take it upon themselves to change the face of publishing. These houses are unique in that they will often focus on the niche of your novel, such as sci-fi and fantasy publisher Angry Robot, or the young adult audience of Leap, and of course, the godfather of independent US publishing: Kensington.

But how can a small or middle-sized house reach people like a Big Five can?

Easy – they use the same distributors as the big guys do. That means your book can still get into Barnes & Noble and everywhere else fine books are sold, without having to sacrifice a new born to get into a Big Five house. Not all major publishers have great promotional teams, and a big house does not mean a safer or better contract. (Seriously. Don’t sign the dotted line until you’ve read every square inch of it.) The key to selling a book well is not necessarily to get into a Big Five publishing house, but rather to have an excellent PR rep and a great distributor.

Now here’s the part where I ask of you, dear reader, to drink deep of this fine, indie publishing Koolaid and tell you one of two things.

First – you don’t need an agent to get into a small or mid-sized house. Many of them don’t require one. All you need to do is do the work of the agent yourself – that means going over your contract with a fine-tooth comb, and maybe contacting an author-friend or two before you sign anything.

Take a sip, and let that sink in.

Are you sitting? Have you tried the Koolaid? It’s actually herbal tea, but who needs the sugar really and all that fake coloring is just – I digress.

I’m going to tell you about a book. A very special book for many, many reasons. It’s a book I don’t order for my little book store through MacMillan or Edelweiss, aka the long arm of Penguin RH (brownie for you if you say Edelweiss with a heavy german accent). I have to go through Bookazine to get it because it’s published through an independent house. It’s gone again in three weeks or less, and I order them all over again like clockwork. Fabulous, profit increasing, indie bookstore supporting clockwork. The title is a middle-grade to young adult series called Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. The author is Ransom Riggs. The publisher is Quirk.

You don’t mean the new Tim Burton movie that’s coming out this summer!

Oh, I do.

Because of this one book, Quirk, who primarily doth not tread in younger audiences, is now taking on middle-grade and YA titles.

So before you give up on publishing that book, before you heave that big ol’ melodramatic anti-hero sigh and decide that maybe getting published traditionally just isn’t for you, consider all of your options first.

I sense a change in the Force dear reader, and it’s bad news for Big Five and fabulous news for the writer’s market. Because if stories like Miss Peregrine become A Thing, stories where books from non-NYC based houses are given their due diligence, Big Five publishers are going to have to change the way they do things.

I see a better world for writers, one where alternative presses and small/mid-size houses actively compete in the land of publishing.

Think I’m crazy?

Keep drinking the Koolaid, and talk to me when Miss Peregrine hits theaters.